VM Optimization

How many idle VMs in your environment?

There are many ways to optimize your VM infrastructure, but decommissioning or re-assigning idle VMs is probably top of the list in terms of immediate gains. Some reports claim that up to 15% of virtual machines in a typical infrastructure are not being used. This is because many users tend to create more VMs than they need and then forget to switch them off when they are no longer needed.

Positively identifying idle machines is not a straightforward task. Most IT admins typically rely on proxy measures such as traffic volume or CPU and memory usage, which produce many false positives. So there is always a risk of interrupting a service when switching off a VM that appears to be idle.

L7Viewer lets you eliminate this risk. It automatically lists all the VMs suspected of being idle based on a detailed view, by protocol and application, of all traffic coming in and going out of all VMs. For example, a machine that has only been a client for DNS, DHCP and NTP traffic for the past two weeks will be flagged as potentially idle. On the other hand, a machine with HTTP or SMTP traffic, even if it’s a small volume will not be flagged.

L7Viewer has a dedicated dashboard for detecting idle VMs and inspecting traffic details to confirm a selection. The ability to see up to the application layer, with data that goes back in time for more than a few days lets you act in confidence.